I am not one to outright complain about something without offering a solution. In the case of this lottery idea (since when are burners gamblers?) I don't think the system was broken in the first place. However, I'm sure the computers that it runs on are far from sufficient as they have been over loaded that third week of January just about every year.

Please enter your complaints about this new idea. And if you can think of one, a solution. If you praise the lottery idea, start a new thread. We'll see which one fills up first (may that be a message to the BMorg about this decision).

Every year I get my responsible (lol) ass online in January with my money in hand. Tickets are on sale for the rest of the spring and summer. They warned of them selling out. Everyone who "needed" to know, knew. If someone is so out of the loop and is waiting til the last minute to buy a max price ticket and didn't know... ...do they really need to be in BRC in the first place? This system seems to reward slackers and punish those who do due diligence and buy their ticket early. Funny how BMorg can't figure out how to sell 10,000 tickets in 3 hours but Ticketmaster and Tickets.com can sell 30,000 in one hour for one show and tons more at the same time for hundreds of other shows all over the country.

This is just a way for BMorg to continue to not get their shit together with a molases ticketing system that's been out dated for years. Along with their servers. This steams with the potential of favoritism in who gets tickets. How can we expect a brand new lottery system to not clog up given the history of issues with just a simple ticket cue? Are they going to run gate with a lottery next too? This sounds way too similar to how concert tickets were sold back in the day when they got sick of people camping out in line at the record store. Raffle tickets. Why did they do that? Cause the Man didn't want Rock fans hanging around strip malls. I hope they extend this lottery system to the staff too. All staff. Leads, Department heads and even Larry. Yup, a lottery for staff tickets. You may get one, you may not. Who cares how much you do. Can I expect to see a lottery for theme camp placement too? How about for Mutant Vehicle invites?

Looks like radical self reliance is out the window. It's now RANDOM self reliance.

Solutions:Only those registered by June (or earlier month) of 2011 will be able to purchase tickets during the first week of sales.Spend less of the BM budget on the Man and invest in computers that can actually handle selling mass amounts of tickets to the Man.Subcontract a company that can handle the purchasing of tickets en mass.Send out emails with a que place holder. Multiple cues, same amount of each tier in each cue. Spread the rush out among multiple servers.CUT OFF SALES IN JUNE. Is there really a reason why we need 50,000+ people in BRC? Do we really need more last minute tourists?Everyone that logged in and bought a ticket last year automatically gets to buy ONE this year in the first week of sales. All at tier 1 prices.Cancel ticket sales and BM all together. We'll all just go out to the desert ourselves for the week. 5 gallon buckets are cheap and who needs to buy coffee at BM? It's free! Ice? Ice maker and a gennie if you need that much luxury in the DESERT!

RBHire some people that are qualified to build servers and write code for ticket sales that are better then what works there now. (Learn how to fire or transfer employees for inadequacy rather then their free speech).

I've been doing actual burner stuff all year. Producing Regionals, Decompression, theme camp, fire art, etc. Watching my burning colleagues finish up a Regional non-profit status I started years ago. We're 501(c)3 now! Basically living it in real life and haven't been on the online world much. Until I had something real to say. Like now. However, I think I should start playing Lotto now. It seems to fit with the BM principles these days!

Oh, and I went to that thing in the desert again this year. Silly me. I bought my ticket on line the day they went on sale. I'm a dummy for not waiting til the last minute.

Rat Bastard wrote:I've been doing actual burner stuff all year. Producing Regionals, Decompression, theme camp, fire art, etc. Watching my burning colleagues finish up a Regional non-profit status I started years ago. We're 501(c)3 now! Basically living it in real life and haven't been on the online world much. Until I had something real to say. Like now. However, I think I should start playing Lotto now. It seems to fit with the BM principles these days!

Oh, and I went to that thing in the desert again this year. Silly me. I bought my ticket on line the day they went on sale. I'm a dummy for not waiting til the last minute.

....... Yup

TITWI

To be on the wire is life. The rest is waiting.
It's show time, folks.....Joe Gideon

If I had a dollar for every new person that signed up on eplaya in the last few days, I'd have about $280.I'm not sure how I came up with that analogy, but it may have something to do with several Grey Goose martinis.

music*is*medicine wrote:Isn't the best way to handle this to make tickets non-transferable?

No, it's not. I think non-transferrable tickets would be a huge mistake. For reasons that have nothing to do with profiteering, probably a quarter of the tickets to the event change hands at least once between date of purchase and when the ticketholder crosses the gate (fundraising for camps and art projects, people covering friends/campmates, suddenly unable to go, gifting, etc). Then there'd be the additional hassle at the gate of matching ticket issue name to ticketholder name, and potentially turning away carloads of people because something doesn't match up.

Shambala wrote:If I had a dollar for every new person that signed up on eplaya in the last few days, I'd have about $280.I'm not sure how I came up with that analogy, but it may have something to do with several Grey Goose martinis.

I assume the reason for the lottery is to keep a few scalpers out, since the event sold out last year I would imagine it is now really worth scalpers buying up tickets. So while I'm not happy about the lottery I'm not completely opposed to it either, there's still a chance you can get a ticket for face value if someone isn't able to go....My real suggestion is in regard to the waistbands. The population max is for any given time, isn't it? Well why not encourage people to share tickets?? Some get away with it already. But actually encourage it by selling a transferable wrist band for something like $50. That helps with the number of tickets that need to be sold if people can just plan to share from the beginning. Seems like it would help some people & make BMORG a little extra cash. Continue to offer those that need to come & go a waistband for $20, write their DL# on the thing & make them show their DL and their stub, so you know it hasn't been transferred to someone else.